


Paint the Man

by oldtimeyryan



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gift, M/M, artist!lock, tumblr drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-07
Updated: 2013-11-07
Packaged: 2017-12-31 18:17:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1034856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldtimeyryan/pseuds/oldtimeyryan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Working in the same industry as Sherlock Holmes wasn’t really that bad. Even having the same art style as him wasn’t terrible. But having to work with him, physically work with him in person... Well, that was an entirely different story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paint the Man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gaytectives](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=gaytectives).



> This isn't exactly the gift I am going to give you guys for being patient, but here! Have a little drabble I wrote whilst procrastinating on my other fics... I am a bad person.

Working in the same industry as Sherlock Holmes wasn’t really that bad. Even having the same art style as him wasn’t terrible. But having to work with him, physically work with him in person... Well, that was an entirely different story.

 

Sherlock was one of those people you loved to hate. He was a self-absorbed prick at the best of times, and at his worst... John was happy to report he had never seen Sherlock Holmes at his worst.

 

Sometimes John had to wonder though, why he was such a big artist. His work was dark and abstract, warped visions of bees in DNA strands, early self-portraiture depicting him naked with wings, and then paintings that looked half finished and then sold. He also wondered why he was said to be his _rival_. His art at least had meaning. It wasn’t dark or depressing, although his self-portraiture was the closest to Holmes’ style than anything else of his.

 

So when his agent, so to speak, told him that the head of the Arts Foundation charity wanted a collaborative piece of art from himself and Holmes, he was quick to deny it.

 

“John,” Sarah sighed, gingerly stepping over a canvas that lay on the floor. John stood in the middle of his workshop, hair messy and pushed back off his face, paint smudges and his hands and arms, and charcoal covering his fingertips. “This was a specific request by Greg Lestrade. The money raised by this painting at the auction will go to underprivileged schools. You came from one, didn’t you? Do this for them!”

 

“Sarah, we have _nothing_ in common. From what I’ve heard, he is a narcissistic dick, an absolute horror to work with, and our artist styles would clash so terribly!” John argued. He gestured to the bright paintings on the walls, and then to his art book on the desk. “We’re too different to for anything to work out properly!”

 

Sarah’s eyes twinkled a little as he talked. “You’ve got more in common than you know, John. Your artistic styles most of all.”

 

John scoffed, turning from her. She obviously wasn’t listening at all. He _really_ didn’t want to associate with Sherlock any more than he had to, and by that he meant being as far away from him as possible. Instead, he sighed, defeated. “Fine. Tell Mr. Lestrade that I accept. I’m figuring you’ve been in contact with Holmes?”

 

“Not exactly, but I will be a lot more now, I’m sure,” she smiled at him. John remembered meeting her, and thinking she was beautiful. The years had definitely been kind to her, and when she smiled she was still that girl he had fumbled with on their first and last date. “The Arts Foundation want the piece in a month. Don’t—”

 

“Disappoint you, I know,” John smiled wryly at her, and she just shook her head.

 

“I’ll bring him soon. I can’t wait to see what you come up with,” Sarah stepped over the canvas again, and smiled at it. “I like this. Very... Raw.” She walked out of the workshop, her heels clicking away. John stared at the canvas, and rubbed his face in irritation. This was going to be a nightmare.

 

-

 

He wasn’t wrong. Sherlock was an irritating dick, petulant and whiny, and an absolute disaster. He was good-looking, John could admit, with high facial bones, indescribable eyes and the perfect curve of lip. His hair was an inky insanity that fell to his shoulders, and his skin was _littered_ in tattoos. Geometric designs, skulls, bleeding bullet holes, curving Gaelic, and there was so much there he looked like a walking version of his own art exhibition.

 

“What art could you and I do that _schools_ would want?” Sherlock snapped from against John’s wall not an hour after he arrived. John was packing some of the canvases away to make room when he turned to Sherlock, who honestly hadn’t moved an inch since he put himself into that position.

 

He sighed, licking his lips before opening his mouth to retort, “I don’t know, Sherlock. Probably not your usual.”

 

Sherlock at least had the liberty to look offended. “We are working together because we have similar artistic styles. If you insult my work, you insult your own.”

 

John bit down on his tongue to retort again. “You are your own worst critic.” He said instead, and Sherlock snorted from across the room. John resisted the urge to punch the lights out of him, and started packing canvases again.

 

-

 

“Perhaps if we had a civilised conversation with our ideas we might have something to do,” Sherlock said on the second day. “We are getting no further than what we were yesterday.”

 

“Maybe if there was a civilised person for me to talk to, maybe we would,” John snapped, ripping out a page from his drafts book, and throwing it against the wall near where Sherlock stood. Sherlock sighed, shoved his hands through his hair, and then went quiet for the rest of the day.

 

John still got nowhere.

 

-

 

A week later and the furthest they had got was deciding on the canvas. They were doing a three-split canvas, the painting continuing on as if the canvas was joined, yet they were still deciding on the design.

 

“There is nothing that make it look _appropriate_ ,” John groaned into his book. He tore out yet another page, and threw it.

 

Sherlock didn’t even look up from his own book. “You are your own worst critic.” He mocked, sketching something in his book, his face slightly glowing with pride. John groaned again, pressing his head against his book in frustration.

 

-

 

“I came from an underprivileged neighbourhood,” John said at the end of the second week. Sherlock looked up from his part of the canvas, where he was drawing out his design in pencil. He had a slight black smudge on his cheek, and his face was soft today. “My school was pretty poor. I dropped out when I was 15. I’ve been doing art ever since.”

 

“I did art for therapy,” Sherlock said, his eyes back on his lines. “I never truly needed therapy, but a free art school was worth it.” He didn’t sound like he took advantage of the classes though. He just sounded... Sad. As sad as Sherlock could sound. John smiled a little at his profile, before returning to his side when it was clear Sherlock was back in his own world.

 

-

 

“I was an addict for the majority of my teenage years,” Sherlock said, smudging the feathers with his finger. His hair was a catastrophe, and his face was probably dirtier than John’s. “I was 20 when I was hospitalised. That was... Three months after the self-portrait of myself with the wings.”

 

“That’s the painting that got you popular, Sherlock,” John mixed the grey with the white to bring forth a lighter colour. “Granted, your overdose probably played a part there.”

 

Sherlock flicked paint at John from the tip of his brush, hitting his cheek and neck. John’s mouth dropped in surprise.

 

“You didn’t,” John laughed. Sherlock joined him, his face lighting up, giving him an aura John had never seen before. John retaliated by flicking paint at him. And then it became a war. Paint flew everywhere, droplets landing on their canvas but they paid no heed.

 

John got the upper hand, sitting on Sherlock’s stomach, the heat of him radiating through his own body, making his head fuzzy. He painted a small picture on his jaw and neck, whilst Sherlock simply breathed below him. Paint covered them both, handprints, drops, lines of painting, and they had just laughed instead of worked.

 

Sherlock looked at John once he had finished his drawing. “I never thought I would be marked by John Watson.” He then kissed John in a way John couldn’t possible describe. He grunted a little in surprise, but let the kiss happen. It was nice, Sherlock’s lips were as soft as they looked, and he clearly knew what he was doing.

 

Kissing Sherlock was nothing like kissing a woman. They had smooth curves of chin, no stubble tickling John’s chin every time they switched position. But Sherlock kissed like no woman. Sherlock kissed the way John had dreamed of being kissed for almost a decade.

 

They broke away. Sherlock’s cheeks were flushed, a slight pink dusting the pale skin. His lips were parted, and his eyes were open, twinkling. He had wanted this, it was so obvious. John got off him, smiling.

 

“Not good?” Sherlock asked from behind him. John bent down to the canvas, looking at the droplets of paint they had thrown there. He just laughed.

 

-

 

“Make the aura lighter,” Sherlock whispered in his ear. “The wing has enough darkness for the both of us.” John shook his head, and added a bit more white to his already pale pink.

 

“As you wish, Master of Colours,” John started painting, and saw that Sherlock in fact did have a good eye for how the colours went. The darker pink melted into the lighter one, as the feathers on the wing got darker. John was careful not to paint over the drops and lines of paint from their fight three days ago. The painting was due to the Art Foundation in just over a week, and John had fretted about the unprofessional look to it, but Sherlock silenced him with another one of those indescribable kisses. And John just went with it.

 

“It looks fine, John, don’t stress,” Sherlock ran his fingers through John’s hair as he painted, before working on more of the wing. The wing took up all three canvases, the feathers spread and gleaming. The aura around it went from light to dark, and the mess added more meaning. Sherlock said when he first started sketching that the wing meant they could go anywhere they wanted, even if underprivileged. The aura meant that times might be dark for them, but there is always a light at the end of the tunnel, which was apparently what his therapist had told him. The mess meant that life would be messy, and it wouldn’t all go to plan, but mess is organised chaos, and that is what life is too. He then lifted John’s chin, kissed him again, and said, “You were the epitome of that for me, John Watson.”

 

And John loved him.

 

-

 

The painting was bought for near to a quarter of a million pounds, and all of that went to the underprivileged, John’s old school included. Sherlock and John had congratulated the buyer, the schools, and then themselves. Sherlock had also announced them a couple at the end of his speech, his words blunt yet warm. “John is my partner now, in many different ways. First, romantically, he is my partner. Second, artistically, he is my partner. And third, for life, he will be my partner. It isn’t hard to fall in love from far away, and that is what I did. His work, his mind, his soul, it all brought us here. And I thank him for being my rival for 3 years, simply so he can be my hero for the rest.”


End file.
